The Discipline of Pious Reason: Goethe, Herder, Kant Daniel ...

attraction to a neoplatonic ethics of universal attraction. Not only are there examples
from elsewhere in Herder’s work of him enthusiastically embracing this doctrine,
even in Liebe und Selbstheit itself there are neoplatonic flourishes. Herder
apostrophises, for example,
To whom can I ascend… except to you, great universal Mother, tender supreme
Father!… Who ought not but to love you, for every creature draws toward you,
points to you? And yet who can love you as one should, since one drowns in the
sea of your thoughts and your presentient feelings and sinks into the deepest
depths only beyond oneself… This eternal pull of your heart to mine is for me an
innate guarantee of my eternal affection for you. (ibid, 4:417-8; p. 117)
Liebe und Selbstheit is therefore not only a polemic against Hemsterhuis, but also a
self-examination. Enacted within the very text of the essay is the struggle between
friendship and love, impiety and piety.
Hence, immediately after the above rhapsody, Herder insists, ‘Even in the current of
divine love, the heart remains a mere human heart.’ (ibid, 4:419; p. 117) This claim is
at the centre of Herder’s interpretation of piety and, more specifically, of his attempt
to apply his ethics of friendship to the human/God relation. Religion should not be
directed towards a unio mystica or ascent to the divine, in which the human self is
annihilated and absorbed into the Godhead. Rather, religion should insist that the
individual relates to God as individual—on a purely human level, without need for
apotheosis or transfiguration. ‘We always remain creatures,’ Herder insists (ibid,